


Silence

by nemo_baker



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Children of Earth, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Prompt Fic, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 20:11:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4450580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nemo_baker/pseuds/nemo_baker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the prompt from <a href="http://ronaldweasleyys.tumblr.com/">ronaldweasleyys</a>: Hey! So if you're still taking prompts - and are determined to be in as much agony as I am - I have an idea. I kinda woke up this morning with this scene of like... Jack looking through some files and he can't find something, so he calls for Ianto and obviously there's no reply, and then Jack kind of just... utterly breaks. And my heart breaks along with him. Just, you know, if you feel like being sad with me. :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silence

**Author's Note:**

> Couple things. Firstly OH MY GOD WHY. Secondly, I set this within the six months between Children of Earth and House of the Dead, because I figure that’s when Jack would still be on Earth and possibly working on a case to keep his many sorrows at bay. I hope this is what you had in mind. Also if i didn’t mention before OH MY GOD WHY

Gwen had stopped trying to contact him about a week ago.

For a month (or possibly longer... Jack wasn’t entirely sure about the passage of time anymore) she’d called him every couple days. The blaring ringtone had knocked feebly against the steel walls he’d built around his heart, scraped against the haze of emotional separation he’d cultivated. She’d left messages, which he never checked. He knew what she wanted to say.

_Come back to Cardiff. To Torchwood. To me._

But he couldn’t. He had work to do, after all.

Although the United States was hardly teeming with as much alien life as Europe seemed to attract, he’d found quite a few mysterious trails to follow since arriving in California. He’d immersed himself in seeking out new cases, from wayward travelers to hostile invaders. So far, there had been nothing he couldn’t handle on his own. Or at least, nothing he couldn’t eventually subdue after he’d died a few times.

The paperwork for his latest case (a string of mysterious combustions that baffled the Bakersfield police) was currently spread out in front of him on a dingy hotel bed. Another pile of papers was placed haphazardly on the armchair on the left side of the room, and some of the files had slid onto the floor. He perused the crime scene photos as the lamp on his bedside table flickered. The stained wall paper was peeling at the corners. The hum of the elevator down the hall had cut off nearly an hour ago, leaving a thick silence in its wake.

As he failed yet again to find a connection, he slid his gaze over to the autopsy reports. There hadn’t been much left of the victims at the explosion sites, but he was willing to look through any information he could find. He rifled through the papers, scanning the dates and names. Seeing nothing. He leaned back against the bedframe behind him, closing his tired eyes. He was certain that the events were connected, even if there was practically no evidence to show it. But whatever vital detail he needed was still slipping under his radar expertly.

A human being couldn’t have pulled off an arson operation of this scale, not without the help of alien technology. But usually it was quite easy to find clues that suggested the use of alien artifacts in cases like this. It wasn’t the kind of thing human beings knew how to hide, because they didn’t quite understand what they were dealing with.

Apparently, this human knew their stuff.

Sighing, he sat up again and reached for a file he’d thought was at the foot of the bed. It detailed a few cases that had seemed unrelated, but that he wanted to check out anyway. Unfortunately, it wasn’t where he remembered.

“Ianto, do you know–”

Oh. No.

He was frozen. His mouth still formed the last word he had spoken, and he felt the lack of a reply ripping his world to pieces. How could he fucking forget that Ianto would never know anything ever again how could Jack forget he was _alone_ and it was _his fault_.

Ianto’s name echoed through his thoughts, swept into crevasses and exploited the faults in his foundations. Memories, painful and cruel things, flooded through him. He could no longer avoid being reminded of the one thing that made it impossible to pretend he was okay.

The walls collapsed. He realized they’d been made of paper, not steel. Tears blurred his vision and wet his cheeks.

He put his head into his hands, and wept.  



End file.
